Crackdown 3 Preview Developer Reagent Games is working in collaboration
with Cloudgine and Sumo Digital on what could be the most revolutionary game of 2016. Welcome
to the SKILLED channel. And today we're talking about new information regarding Crackdown
3. This will be the first game to fully take advantage of the cloud technology which Microsoft
has been promising gamers ever since the Xbox One was first introduced. Three years after
the fact, we are finally seeing it happen. The Crackdown series is known for its intense
and engaging third-person action in an open-world, sandbox environment. With upgradeable abilities,
transforming vehicles, and a whole city of objects that can potentially be used as weapons
or shields for your agent, the Crackdown series has already set itself apart from other third-person
action games. Not to mention the popularity of platforming around a vast city and collecting
orbs. Crackdown 3 is continuing the basic gameplay
of its predecessors, including the presence of orbs and transforming vehicles. However,
the developers, led by Dave Jones, the original creator and developer of the first game in
the series, wanted to build upon Crackdown�s winning formula by creating an entire city
that is 100% physical and thus 100% destructible. Dave Jones (Creative Director) said �We
really wanted to do something [with the multiplayer] that was very much within the heart of what
Crackdown is. It's a very physical game with you being able to go into the world and pick
up every trash can, rip stuff out of the street, tear car doors off and use it as a shield,
or even pick the whole car up. It was all about physicality, so we really wanted to
bring that physicality to the online [multiplayer] space."
As Dave Jones himself has explained in several interviews, a totally physical city takes
up a tremendous amount of computing power�far more than the Xbox One can process on its
own. There are various claims to the specific amount of computing power needed, anywhere
from 10 to 20 times the power of the Xbox One, but whatever the amount, Crackdown 3
will be using Microsoft�s vast server farm to handle the complexities of a fully-destructible
city. In fact, practically every single building will be handled by a different server, and
the more computing power is needed, the more Xbox One draws upon the computing resources
of other servers. Essentially, this system of connecting the console to the cloud makes
the Xbox One the most powerful console of all time, and that has revolutionary implications
that the gaming world has just barely begun to imagine.
Dave Jones explained what 100% physicality actually means via a bullet demonstration.
Physical bullets hitting a physical surface means that every bullet makes its own hole.
Make enough holes, and that area of the surface will crumble away and fall to the ground.
But the rubble remains in-game at all times because it is physical. Even after demolishing
an entire building, you are able to find every single piece of it still lying there in a
pile. This takes the possibilities of citywide destruction to a whole new, finely-tuned level.
Ruptured gas lines within buildings set off a chain reaction of explosions, and buildings
tumbling down into other buildings create a domino effect of destruction. It�s a gameplay
mechanic never before seen in video games, and it could drastically change the way you
play Crackdown 3. That could be one of several reasons why the
100% destructibility of the city is only a part of the online multiplayer experience.
The offline single-player campaign will continue
to build on the first two games to create an exciting new story in the Crackdown universe,
but it will have limited destruction capabilities. Trailers and gameplay footage show a new,
futuristic city with a city-wide network of gangs and crime lords in business together.
Your job as an agent of justice is to break up that network and cause havoc to the crime
lords� empire. The game allows you to do this any way you want in an open-world environment.
Even though it�s titled Crackdown 3, it has also been called a remake or re-imagining
of the first game, taking most of its influence and inspiration from that game rather than
from the first sequel. The best part is that four-player co-op will
be returning, so you can take on the engaging campaign with three of your friends. In the
campaign mode, you can design your high-tech police agent to look any way you want. The
regular physical attribute options are all present, including the option to be either
male or female. And though the number of orbs is unknown at this time, the team behind Crackdown
3 assures its fans that orbs will play a big part in the game as always. There will be
plenty of vertical platforming and orb-hunting to satisfy the players.
Another possible reason why the campaign mode is planned to be an offline experience is
the fear of internet connection problems. There is also a fear among many gamers that
a necessary online-at-all-times connection will negatively affect gaming in general.
The team behind Crackdown has considered all of these fears and has promised that whether
you have an internet connection or not, you will be able to enjoy this game.
For the online multiplayer experience in particular, the teams of developers have worked very hard
to ensure that it actually works and works well for gamers at all times. The multiplayer
aspect of Crackdown 3 is being designed to run on an internet connection of 2-4 megabits
per second as its optimal level between the Xbox One console and Microsoft servers. At
this time, the multiplayer experience is planned to have a maximum of four players and many
more modes than just deathmatch. They want the multiplayer experience to be as dynamic
as possible for you and your friends. Dave Jones stated "My friends might be in the top
of a lbuilding and shooting at me. I want to bring that building down with them still
inside it. That's absolutely what I want to do. Our buildings are made physically and
to do that we need make sure everything stacks up in terms of the physics. Everything in
the world is physical and everything persists. There's no fakery here."
A revolutionary multiplayer experience deserves worthy modes of gameplay. That�s why the
developers are hard at work to take advantage of the new options suddenly available to players,
such as toppling a building to create a bridge across a river or a ramp that runs up another
building. 100% destructibility means that players suddenly have a third option to consider.
Not only can platform their way up buildings or infiltrate them by moving through fully-realized
structures one level at a time, but they can also decide to cause large-scale destruction
in creative and strategic ways to complete their mission. Also, hiding behind walls or
other objects will no longer be a viable way to survive against heavy gunfire. Crackdown
3 is another step forward in making games more like the real world, and the designers
behind it are fully aware of that and of the duty placed upon them to make this the best
possible experience for gamers and fans of the Crackdown series.
Crackdown 3 is set to release sometime in the summer of 2016. It will be an exclusive
title for the Xbox One, and it may just be the most technically impressive console game
ever created. The cell-shaded graphics might not provide the photo-realistic experience
found in other games, but the impressive computing power being harnessed from a whole farm of
servers more than makes up for it. What is your opinion on Crackdown 3? Will it be a
hell of a lot of multiplayer fun or is this extra cloud computing power just a myth? Let
us know in the comments. And subscribe to the SKILLED Youtube channel for more updates
on Crackdown 3 and other cool games.